
Our Eternal Curse: Another Tribe by Simon Rumney is part of a series that covers the many lives and deaths of one woman throughout history who seems destined to play a large part in the history of whatever time period and place she is born. In Another Tribe, Julii is a young Native American woman living in a lost valley, with her banished tribe, in the heartland of Tennessee, during the American Civil War. Having no knowledge of any life outside her tribe, when she finds a dying, Confederate Captain near their waterhole, she rescues him and nurses him back to health, blissfully unaware that her life and her understanding of the world is about to change forever. Having fallen in love with this soldier, she accompanies him back to Atlanta where she is rudely introduced to the hatred and bigotry that was such an integral part of the early South. Determined to survive, Julii becomes a force that will turn the fortunes of the Civil War on its head.
I particularly found Rumney’s use of the narrative to highlight the incredible injustices heaped upon both the Indians and the Negro slaves to be enlightening. The idea of a pure, innocent, woman without any preconceived prejudices, confronting such vicious and vile vitriol head on, was very refreshing and, as a reader, I found the character of Julii easy to identify with and feel sympathy for. As the storyline developed, we are given little peeks inside of Julii’s subconscious and we slowly come to realise that all is not as it seems. There is much more to Julii’s character than we at first believed. This was a clever way to introduce the concept of a series to those who were reading the book as a standalone, rather than in order. An excellent fast-moving story from Simon Rumney and Our Eternal Curse: Another Tribe was a satisfying read.
